The Vote With the Wallet as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma

Abstract:
Socially responsible consumers and investors are increasingly using their consumption and saving choices as a “vote with the wallet” to award companies which are at vanguard in reconciling the creation of economic value with social and environmental sustainability. In our paper we model the vote with the wallet as a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma, outline equilibria and possible solutions to the related coordination failure problem, apply our analysis to domains in which the vote with the wallet is empirically more relevant, and provide policy suggestions